As for transparency, it’s there to be found. Try it. Be smart.
Every time I reveal something of how admissions works where I am, realize how many people tell me, “No.” Kids to long time adult poster arguers. Lol.
Carry on. But try to realize that listening, doing the research at the real source, and processing trump just getting to gripe.
@TheBigChef I agree that there will be more scrutiny of college athletes as well as the remote test taking being shut down but I still don’t see real changes out there. This kind of activity did not come about on a lark. Admissions to elite colleges has become so difficult and so vague that parents without a moral compass are willing to try anything.
I’ve been mulling over why these wealthy parents would be willing to take such risks when there are so many reputable colleges out there which would have been quite willing to take their kids the legal way. It may have to do with the fact that if their children attend a low ranked school, they can’t pretend its because they are receiving merit. Their kids have no cover. Everyone will know that the low ranked school is the best they could do. I’m not suggesting this as an excuse at all. Its not. But I wonder if its part of the motivation.
In my area, I have noticed that often if a child is attending a low ranked school, the parents are quick to state that its because they got a great “package.” They will often quickly add the names of the elite schools that their child supposedly turned down. It seems to be a way to distance themselves from the low ranking. Its unfortunate, but if people in my area feel the need to do this, I can only imagine how these pampered rich families must feel.
Again, not a justification – just a thought.
@MmeZeeZee There’s plenty of anti-college sentiment out there already. Especially against “elitist” institutions.
I do think the admissions process needs to become more transparent so that these kinds of fraudulent activities aren’t hidden for so long. I doubt colleges would find that appealing though.
As much as I respect everyone posting here, my idea of transparency is stated official policy direct from universities. The universities are collecting the application fees and ultimately the attendance fees. Therefore the universities should have a legal and moral obligation to state on the record the policies and procedures that they are using.
Public sentiment is not against college. It is against elitism. This scandal has touched so many nerves because it highlights elitism gained by cheating. They are the ‘fake elites’. They can’t get in honestly so they cheat. I think people just want an honest, transparent system that treats all applicants equally.
I have thought this in the past as well, but I’m not sure any more. I thought it would benefit students to know how slight their chances really are. Perhaps it would lessen their disappointment or prompt them to create a sensible college list. But the truth is that if they knew their chances are 2% instead of 6%, it probably wouldn’t make a difference. They would still assume they had a chance because they have perfect scores and grades.
In fact, these schools do state many of their preferences as part of their official documents. The CDS states clearly that these schools consider legacy, geography, race, etc. What more can they do, besides state over and over that most of the applicants are fully qualified?
@Gourmetmom “Regarding college admissions, to argue that a long time donor should expect their child’s application to be lumped in the pile with the rest of the 50,000 or so applicants is ridiculous, especially when you consider that athletes, non-donating legacies, URMs, the kid from Alaska, on and on, all get an admissions tip. So its okay for all of those students to get a tip, but not the qualified child of the couple who donated a building? Silly.”
Is it “okay”? It is certainly okay from the college’s perspective and it is certainly legal and it is certainly something of value that is received in exchange for that large donation that is entirely tax-deductible and only for “charitable purposes”. We now know that some parents value that “tip” from athletics at $1.2 million.
Why would a child whose parents are rich enough to give her the best education money can buy for 13 years, replete with tutors, private schools with very small class sizes, travel, etc. need a “tip” when everyone keeps insisting that the children of the very rich are just as good as middle class students who are in that big pile?
Since this story is a post about the corruption of athletic recruiting, let’s use it as an example.
You mentioned athletes get a tip and something that I have learned from this scandal is that at elite colleges, coaches of sports played primarily by affluent students can designate students as recruits where they go into those special admission piles.
You seem to be saying that as long as the university is okay with it, it would be perfectly reasonable for a coach with 6 recruiting spots to put all students vying to be recruited athletes into two different piles. One pile of students would be those vying to be recruited athletes whose parents made a donation of $2 million to the athletic department. The other pile of students would be those vying to be recruited athletes whose parents did not donate $2 million to the athletics department. If a student from pile 1 – those whose parents donated $2 million to the athletics department – played the sport at a baseline level (perhaps got a varsity letter on their high school team) and meet some basic level of grades and test scores, that student would be designated for one of the recruiting spots for students from pile 1. All the other students vying to be athletic recruits – a significantly large number since very few students have parents who can donate $2 million to the athletics department – would go into the other pile to compete against one another for the remaining recruiting seats. Those remaining recruiting seats would go to students who are superb athletes and very strong students.
But there are not enough designated recruiting spots for all the students who are superb athletes and strong students. Other students who are all-state in their sport and straight A students with high test scores don’t get a recruiting spot and they look at a very wealthy classmate who got a varsity letter and has lower grades and test scores than he does and wonders why he got a designated recruiting seat. Then he learns that student’s family donated $2 million to the athletic center that year.
It would be perfectly reasonable to tell the aspiring recruit that he probably wasn’t going to get the recruit spot anyway because they are so hard to get, and that the athletic department has “institutional needs” to meet and that the recruited athletes whose parents donated $2 million still had to meet some baseline criteria of athletic participation and academics or they would not have been admitted. All that would be true.
But I suspect the recruit might be slightly put off if you also told him “by the way the $2 million dollar donation was entirely tax-deductible because it was made entirely for charitable purposes and had nothing to do with the fact that your teammate who isn’t nearly as athletically successful or academically successful was admitted over you. That student got in via their own merits”.
We know that donations to MIT are charitable because the children of big donors are put in the same pile as everyone else. I don’t have a problem with donors getting their child put in a separate pile – either as an athletic recruit as I mentioned above or on some “dean’s list”. The university can do whatever it wants. But I don’t believe a $2 million donation to the athletics’ department so your child’s recruit application goes into a special pile for children of $2 million donors - instead of just having the coach recruit him only if he is the best athlete/student of all the aspiring recruits - should be tax deductible. You are buying an advantage.
Being admitted over students who are - by every measure except how much their parents donated – better than you simply because you are “qualified” is very much a benefit of that donation. If the donation was not contingent on a benefit, there would be no need to put those students in a special pile because they would get in on their own merits anyway.
@TatinG
" I think people just want an honest, transparent system that treats all applicants equally." – They have it. It’s called “public schools.” The vast, vast majority are as you described it.
@TatinG There are definitely areas of public sentiment that have become anti-college for a number of reasons. Costs, anti-intellectualism, beliefs that colleges foster elitism, culture wars, perceived academic liberalism, etc. It exists, This will most likely feed into some of that.
Of course, what people consider to be “fair” depends on where they are.
For example, when considering any way that merit is measured, people tend to think of merit that their own group acquires as fully earned, but that groups who acquire merit more successfully do so because of unfair advantages, while groups that are less successful at acquiring merit are blamed for their own failings to do so.
@17yeargap wrote
I did not say Ivy/elite. I said selective. USC, UCLA, Rice, UMich, Notre Dame, WUSTL,… are very selective to me.
@momo2x2018 I guess different worlds. We were at a large dinner with a group of 20 somethings this weekend, current college students and old people like me. I brought it up and the response was, “oh ya, I/we heard about that, funny someone would pay that much to get their kid into a college.” That was it, no other conversation about it. No one cared. I really think most have moved on except for the few that wash-rinse-repeat the same point over and over again.
This has probably already been mentioned upthread, but what gets me is, the $500,000.00 Lori Loughlin paid in bribes could have easily paid for a degree a moderately well-known school. Some fairly well-known schools have been known to admit marginal kids whose parents can pay full freight. Why wasn’t one of those good enough?
@Bestfriendsgirl Uh, ya might want to read the 192 pages of posts if you are interested in that conversation.
And the Loughlin’s weren’t the only ones involved. I just love the Hollywood infatuation of this country, that is what is transparent about all this!
" I think people just want an honest, transparent system that treats all applicants equally."
Yup. Check out the polls in the link below.
People don’t like hooks. They don’t like athlete hooks. They don’t like legacy hooks. They don’t like AA-URM type hooks either. They are less enthused about community service and high test scores – probably because they perceive that people are gaming there. Which turns the community service and high test scores from a merit thing to more of a BS gaming hook thing. Folks are OK with high grades being a determining factor.
Hooks is really what this whole scandal is all about. High test scores and recruited athlete status are well-recognized hooks that are used every day to jump to the head of the line. This scandal is using bribes to get the hooks that others furiously chase too – they just don’t bribe anyone in those furious efforts.
Once you have a system rife with hooks, then folks obviously will start working to get to get hooks for their kids too. And defending the OK-ness of the hooks that they can take advantage of. Hence the endless posts about how the hooks aren’t really that big (“just a feather on a scale”), and that the hooked kids (legacies, minorities, athletes) are still so very smart and qualified, etc. etc. etc. etc. Unhooked people get angry when hooked people tell them the hook is no big deal.
There’s an obvious incentive for the school and the hooked to be vague and minimize the hookiness of the system. Since people don’t like the hookiness (even though they seek all available hooks for their own kids).
No answers to this.
@Bestfriendsgirl “This has probably already been mentioned upthread, but what gets me is, the $500,000.00 Lori Loughlin paid in bribes could have easily paid for a degree a moderately well-known school. Some fairly well-known schools have been known to admit marginal kids whose parents can pay full freight. Why wasn’t one of those good enough?”
USC is one of the few west coast private colleges (other than Standford) that have everything, big time sports, some great programs in Film/Media, Business, etc, is located in SoCal, Top 25 college, and excellent alumni network and career opportunities. Many kids from private middle schools and high schools want to attend private colleges and few are better on the west coast than USC. It checks the box for many kids who live in SoCal. I can definitely see the appeal, especially for kids from wealthy families who want to stay and work in SoCal. Lastly, 500K is not a lot of money to these families so why would she want to go to a “lesser” private college like LMU, Pepperdine or Chapman when she can guarantee admission to USC. Of course it’s wrong to bribe your way in but for a cheating family like their’s the ultimate prize was USC. Just my 2 cents.
“But if you take a look at the top 5%, 10% of a HS class then you will see a larger percentage of them apply to selective colleges. This is clearly shown by Naviance scattergrams.”
…At the ~25% of high schools that can afford to and choose to use Naviance. This is another common CC generalization. Naviance is a commercial product that you have to buy. Some high schools can’t afford it. At many others, it wouldn’t be useful, because even the top kids go to the local flagship and the stats required to get in are widely known.
Naviance itself claims it works with 8,500 schools in 100 countries. There are 37,000 high schools in the US alone. So even if we assume almost all of the customers are in the United States, only about a quarter of high schools use Naviance. Not surprisingly, the ones that invest in this product are the ones where some meaningful percentage of students apply to selective or out-of-state colleges.
You are right. Testing is a billion dollar business and they would not do anything to negatively affect it. They would most likely p-hack the tests to make them easily “hackable” to those with assets to spare. Have a look at Randall Collin’s “The Credential Society” (1979). He explained how the expansion in education in the 19th century was not driven by economic demand but by the elites of the time to monopolize the best jobs for their offspring.
Nothing has changed really.
Just to be clear again on “completely” tax deductible and also size of gifts.
The 2mm gift mentioned would not be a level that would give anyone, some mythical guaranteed spot, at the schools being discussed.
And the 2mm would result in a best case 700000 tax offset. If that person had agi income of 4mm that year.
And many times these large asset pools don’t always correlate with huge current agi or income.
So in the case of a fully deductible 2mm gift still would have a net cost of 1.3mm.
No smart person spends 2mm to save 700k.
And when you are talking 10mm type gifts, the deductibility, as a percentage, in any given year is reduced, generally.
So even if they think it will help Johnny or Jill get into Yale someday. There are always other competing interests.
-Helping others.
-Thanks to the school that helped them in life.
-And perhaps vanity.
-And perhaps having a legacy for your name on a building.
In my experience in these matters, which is not insignificant, but certainly not for myself - it is a most commonly a mixture or all of these factors.
And usually the “potential child” getting a benefit is last on the list. Most donors really like the access to events, games and meeting the actual scholarship students themselves the most.
And FYI they also give a lot of money to the Red Cross, United Way and Foodbanks too.
This isn’t the only thing that defines a person. Despite some people wanting to paint all with the same broad brush.
And the most generous gifts to schools, I have seen personally, were from individuals who started out in life on a scholarship themselves.
These are not royal bequeaths. Just regular people who made a lot of money in their own way, in many instances.